


In the Pipes

by LucyAnne



Category: Cherry Almanac
Genre: Insect Horror, Isolation, Parental Abuse, Sibling Rivalry, Violence against minors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:07:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24029365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LucyAnne/pseuds/LucyAnne
Summary: The Endicott siblings bicker too much.
Kudos: 1





	In the Pipes

**Author's Note:**

> CW: Sibling Rivalry, Parental Abuse, Insect Horror, Isolation, Violence Against Minors

_“The Peruvian Pipe Organ is a marvel of human engineering,”_ read the opening page of Amelia’s instructory booklet. _“Standing at over eight civilized stories, the organ continues to astound musical and structural engineers alike with its spiraling mass of stainless steel piping, said to run the length of dozens of kilometers when extended and resemble a coral reef or human circulatory system when fully assembled. And yet, curiously, its polished ivory keyboard measures only about eleven meters in diameter, small enough to be played by a single pianist (so long as he is adequately equipped on each arm with the prosthetic, balsawood appendages known as ‘toolies’, described in greater detail on pg. 48 of this very booklet)._

_It is said that, when played, the glorious melody which erupts from the oddly horn-like bells of the organ’s pipes is loud enough to be heard across the countryside, alerting all to its presence, and to the innumerous wealth and talent of its well-endowed owner each and every time a key is pressed. So marvelous is the milky bellowing of this towering monument to unnecessary opulence that townsfolk have been known to flock from afar to angrily locate the source of their early-morning or late-night arousal (the best times to play are when others are least-likely to expect to hear it!)?  
But such is the unavoidable burden of owning and operating such a God-like machine; always will your neighbors covet this most highly-prized of all your possessions, for among the litany of roiling emotions indisputably stirred in the hearts of men each time the organ is played, invariably will the sourest feeling of envy find itself worming its way among them. Though fear not! It is my personal experience that the jealous rage of fellow musicians and comrades alike is also the most satisfying to bask in whenever you flaunt your newest and most prestigious musical asset.  
For what else can they do, besides cry up from the streets they may have occupied en masse outside your manor, and solidify in doing so your success as a man of utmost stature? Certainly the enormity of the fabled Peruvian Pipe Organ keeps it from being easily carried away or dismantled by any group smaller than the 500-man crew initially required to erect it. Yes, its biblical stature is clearly not only its defining feature, but also at once its greatest defence. Even now, top magistrates from around the world are convening to discuss the validity of the organ’s consideration for the endlessly esteemed title of ‘8th Wonder of the World.’_

_The rumors are true, dear reader: My greatest physical creation - save for the sprawling, 18-hour-long concerto I’ve composed specially to be played on the instrument in question - The Peruvian Pipe Organ has officially been placed within the running against such competitors as my lifelong rival Kemelen’s Mechanical Turk (a device so unsettlingly hideous it pains me to sully these pages with the mere mention of its name) to be considered equals with the historical beauties of Giza and Babylon. Make no mistake, reader, my invention will win out, in the end, and that is why I implore you with such tenacity to make this most sensible of purchases, to sign the contract attached to this ~free~ informational booklet, and to fill your home with sounds of the Gods themselves in sultry and passionate heat-”_

Edward (who’d been reading along over his sister’s shoulder as they bounced along in the carriage on the way to their Uncle’s sprawling, regal estate) didn’t recognize over half the words he’d just watched his older sibling mouth to herself (and he’d reckon she didn’t either), but he knew enough about “adult stuff” from his time spent reading dirty books he’d swiped from the joke shop to know that the last sentence on the paper Amelia was so delicately perusing most _definitely_ counted as “adult stuff.” From just behind her, Edward grinned with excitement at this opportunity to harass her that nothing in the world could stop him from seizing. 

“Amelia’s reading sex books, Amelia’s reading sex books!” he cried, reaching his hand under her arm as he did so and slamming the lid of the book shut. He moved quickly enough to at first catch her off guard, but not so quick that she couldn’t snap her arm shut over his retracting hand like a metal bar on a rat’s tail, before swiveling around in her seat to sock him a good one in the arm. Amelia may have been a girl, but her brother hadn’t really started growing yet, and so was still a shrimp compared to her. 

Edward wailed preemptively as she raised her fist to strike him, waking their baby sister Rosie (who of course began crying herself), all in a perfectly-timed gambit that made Amelia out to be the villain when their mother swept away the partition curtain and saw her eldest waylaying her second. Amelia immediately dropped her brother and began to beg forgiveness, but before she could utter a word, her mother swiped what she’d been reading off of Amelia’s lap and began to page through it, much to the girl’s horror. Amelia braced for impact while Edward bit his lip in giddy anticipation of her thrashing, but instead their mother simply let out a long sigh and rolled her eyes. 

“Amelia, I know you love your uncle dearly, as well you should, but the truth is he’s a sad old pervert, and he’s never going to get that mad contraption of his sold, no matter how much he tries.”  
s  
“Well of _course_ not!” Amelia yelled, though she knew far better than to do so. “Why would anyone ever want to _sell_ such a wondrous instrument?!”

Her mother shut her up with a single glare, but gave her a cursory “Hush” just to be safe, and threw the booklet out the window just to drive the point home. “It’s a waste of space and a pain on the ears. He’d do well to just burn the whole thing overnight, and _you’d_ do well not to listen to a single word he tells you. Now I don’t want to hear any more on the matter. We’re almost there, so _please_ just behave yourselves for the remainder of the journey. Here, Rosie,” she said, reaching out to grab the still-crying six-year-old and pull her into the front seat for kisses. 

“You still treat her like a baby, it’s no wonder she can barely talk at her age,” Amelia muttered icily underneath her breath, a bump on the road and rattle of the wheels thankfully covering the sentiment she’d immediately begun praying her mother wouldn’t hear. 

“And _you_ ,” their mother said, staring newly-sharpened daggers back at her son, who froze in place the moment she did so. “Keep your bloody hands off of your sister, or I’ll toss you out in the mud just as well.” 

He said nothing, but simply nodded and gulped. Amelia sat back and smiled pleasantly, happy at least for the moment that her brother hadn’t totally escaped unscathed. He and Rosie both were dreadful little rotters, but Amelia wasn’t about to let that - or the permanent loss of her beloved literature - dampen her excitement. It wasn’t often they got to visit their Uncle Elias in his castle on the hill, and even rarer than that were the times when their mother neglected to accompany them when doing so. She didn’t trust them not to get lost in or break something unspeakably valuable in her brother’s booming estate, but that was rooted more in concern for her own social status than it was her children’s safety, and even that had started waning in comparison to her aching desire for just a few day’s solitude. 

Though Amelia was fully aware of all of this, it didn’t affect her in an unpleasant way, for she knew her time spent in the home of her dear and eternally beloved uncle would provide her with a similar, much-needed break from each of the insufferable mudlarks the doctors insisted on calling her family. She knew that instantly upon arriving at the mansion, Rosie would be off to a nap, Edward would be off to explore the building’s winding corridors, and she would have all the time in the world to spend with that grandest of pianos. Each of her dullard siblings would quickly find themselves placated by the simplest of pleasures, while she… she would engage in something a little more refined. Besides, it wasn’t as if she hadn’t read Elias’s pamphlet enough times to have each word memorized by heart. 

___

Not two hours later, and her patience had paid off in a very real way. No longer were her fantasies relegated to the inner caverns of her mind. Here, they found their seat in reality. Or rather, upon the tight red leather of Elias’s swivel-based conductor’s chair; the first part of a slightly-upsetting memory of her first time seeing or interacting with the organ. Amelia - with some difficulty - had hoisted herself up upon the impossibly plump cushion which even back then she could tell had been custom-made to fit her uncle’s bizarrely-proportioned body. 

The man was built (and rather resembled) a common garden gnome, though with his legs and arms stretched out like long strands of spaghetti. It was something Amelia felt you had to see to believe, although looking at both the distance between the chair and the marbled floor and the chair and the three concentric circles of keys surrounding it in every direction (there was a small gate she’d had to enter in order to reach the organ’s pulpit) it wasn’t exactly difficult to surmise the dimensions of the man who’d designed it to be this way. 

Leaning out of the chair so far that she probably risked falling out of it entirely by doing so, Amelia pulled her fingers across the first row of glistening keys, stroking them ever so gently so as not to accidentally apply too much force, lest a single note of the organ play and alert any of the maids or servants to her presence. 

Then, as if on cue, she’d lost her balance, bucking forward and falling directly into the keys with both hands splayed and outstretched. Somewhere between four and seven of the keys were pressed at once, and the sound it emitted was far beyond what her nine-year-old vocabulary had been capable of describing. But it had stuck with her ever since, the fading of the melody a ceaseless hum that never left back of her head. 

Now, three years after the incident that had sent Elias (with surprising dexterity given his age) vaulting over the gate to whip her silly for having dared touch his beloved device, Amelia found herself once more in the cathedral-esque chamber it was housed in, staring up at the preposterously tangled pipes which wove in and out of the perfectly-sized holes in the walls around them, and once more found herself feeling with a dizzying sort of wonder like she was trapped in the clutches of a great and terrible octopus. It was that very same childlike wonder the notes she’d heard all that time ago had instilled in her that caused her to sneak back into the organ chamber time and time again upon each subsequent visit, and despite the scars she still sported from the last time she’d been clumsy enough to be caught doing so. 

It was an obsession she’d never let slide, and every last moment spent outside the walls of that cursed estate had been spent pouring over absolutely anything even remotely organ or piano-related she could manage to get her grubby little fingers on. And it was only quite recently, curiously enough, that Elias had begun going to such great pains to try to somehow rid himself of the instrument, a feat that had proved equal parts stunningly and comically hard to accomplish, literally embedded in the very foundation of the manor as it was. Still, Elias was a rich and powerful man, with many rich and powerful connections, and Amelia feared it was only a matter of time before he found someone greedy enough to have the organ disassembled and shipped off to Australia or something. 

The only real upside to the whole affair was that, in order to have even the slimmest of shots at marketing his grand invention, Amelia’s uncle had needed (for once) to make information on the organ and the specifics of its construction both widely and publicly available, and as laudy and self-congratulatory as said information turned out to be, it was still the only readily-available compendium of knowledge on the now world-famous organ, and as such, pianists and collectors of every skill level (Amelia included) had fallen upon what little was provided to them like wolves to prey.  
Now, here, with the last of the bones licked clean a thousand times over, Amelia could do nothing more but gaze upon the piped beast in secret, content at least in the fact that she was the only one who actually got to see it. 

_*THWACK!*_

Amelia started, heart racing, then blood boiling as within seconds she traced the trajectory of what turned out to be nothing more than a carefully-aimed spitball to just over the arch of one of the many pews Elias had erected to stand before the organ, as if anyone needed to be closer than five kilometers away from the thing in order to hear its piping loud and clear. She pounced atop the pew in question, ready to swipe viciously at the snickering imp of a brother she was sure was cowering behind it. 

To her complete and utter dismay, however, she not only found precisely the brownie she’d expected to see, but sitting next to him with both her feet splayed out like a toddler was another giggling goblin to boot: Rosie. Amelia decided to swipe at them anyway, and they both took off running, sniggering the whole while. 

“You’re not supposed to be _in_ here!” she hissed, careful to keep her voice down. 

“Neither are you!” shouted Edward, completely oblivious to the way his shrill, undeveloped voice ricocheted off the walls, making it way louder than it already was. 

_“Shhhhh!”_ she said, having hearded Edward to one end of a pew with her on the other, the two of them clutching their respective ends and repeatedly making as if they were going to make a break towards or away from the other. 

“Yeah, _shhptthhhh!”_ spat Rosie from directly behind her, turning the shush (whether intentionally or not was anyone’s guess) into a wet raspberry halfway through and spraying a volley of saliva all over the back of Amelia’s legs. 

Edward used this distraction as an opportunity to dart away, and at this, Amelia barely stifled a scream of frustration. She tore into the air behind her, gripping Rosie’s arm tight before she could scamper away and hide with her brother under one of the curved oak seats. Amelia yanked hard, digging her nails in and momentarily forgetting that Rosie was still just a kid until the crying began. Fear overtook frustration as Amelia loosened her grip enough to stop hurting her sister, but enough to keep her from running off and finding Uncle Elias to tattle to. Desperate to avoid getting caught for the dumbest of reasons, she pulled Rosie close and clamped one hand over her sister’s mouth in what ended up being a fairly-successful attempt at muffling her high-pitched screams. 

Within seconds, the pair were sat upon the lowermost steps of the dais leading up to the organ gate. Amelia had Rosie up on her knee, and was doing her best to hold the child tight while still covering her mouth and brushing her hair, trying her best to calm Rosie down. She knew her sister wasn’t actually hurt on account of how much she was licking Amelia’s palm to try to get her to let go. Rosie was famous among the ranks of their family for resorting to such infantile tactics when the stakes were low. Any actual danger, and you’d surely feel her teeth sinking harshly into your skin. 

Edward mosied on over from across the room and sat down next to them, absentmindedly fiddling with a wooden top as if he’d played no part in instigating any of this. Amelia glared at him, but at this point was far too weary to make any effort at giving chase. 

“You guys aren’t supposed to be in here,” she repeated. 

“And you are?” Edward chided. 

Amelia’s face twisted into a grimace, and she turned and snapped at him. “ _I_ get to be here because _I_ actually appreciate the arts, unlike you.” 

“Not according to Uncle Eliaaaas,” he said, in a sing-song voice. “He whipped you pretty bad last time. Betcha all the money in the world he’d do it again.” 

“I’ll whip _you_ , you little troll,” she sneered. “You know I can. Why are you here, anyway? Haven’t you got things to knock over, or pastries to steal?” 

Edward shrugged. “I’ve done all that. We’ve been coming here for years, and I’ve been through all of the castle by now.”  
He was pouting now. Amelia rolled her eyes. 

“At least…” he continued, innocently. “... all the parts I’m _allow_ ed in.” 

At this, Amelia looked at him suspiciously, then followed his gaze all the way up to where the pipes met the base of the organ just a few meters off the ground, and just a few more behind them. Edward couldn’t help but smile as it dawned on Amelia’s face exactly what he was suggesting. 

_“NO,”_ she said in a firm, but understandably hushed tone. _“N. O.”_

“Whaaat?” Edward said, sheepishly. “I didn’t even say anything.”

“Maybe not, but I know what you’re thinking, and if you even look at that organ one more time, _I’ll_ tattle to Elias, and he’ll beat you way worse than he beat me, because you’re a boy.” She paused, savoring the perfect setup she’d supplied herself with. “...Even if you don’t look like one.”

 _“Shut up!”_ he said, getting to his feet and feigning a kick at her head she knew he’d be too scared to purposefully connect. She smirked, knowing she’d finally gotten to him.  
“They’re gonna tear this whole stupid thing down soon, and I’m gonna laugh when they do,” he said, his voice full of chagrin. 

“Sure they will,” Amelia said, trying her best not to show how close he’d hit to one of her big fears. 

“They’re gonna,” he said, egged on by the tiny sliver of doubt he masterfully detected in her voice. “I heard Uncle Elias talking about it earlier.” 

“No you didn’t.”

“Did too! And guess what? He didn’t even find anyone to buy it! They’re just gonna tear it down and throw it all away.” 

“Be quiet!” Now it was Amelia’s turn to be cut to the core. “That doesn’t even make any sense. There’s no reason they would do that.”

“Is too. Remember Ephraim?”

Amelia thought for a moment. “Ephraim the butler? Uncle’s servant?”

Edward nodded curtly. “Uh-huh. He went missing a few months ago.” 

“No he did not,” Amelia said, trying to cover a (at long last) quiet Rosie’s ears and partially wishing she had someone to cover her own. 

“Did too! While he was cleaning. Just up and vanished and nobody’s seen him sense. Nobody’s even smelled his body.”

 _“Edward!”_ she sniped, clutching Rosie’s head even tighter, but Edward continued. 

“And you’ll never guess where he was seen right before it happened.”

Amelia couldn’t help herself now. She was intrigued. Whether he was lying or not, she had to admit her Uncle’s favoured butler hadn’t shown his face the entire while they’d been there, nor had anyone else mentioned his name. “...Where?”

Edward got a smug look on his face and simply pointed.

Amelia didn’t even have to turn to see what he was pointing to, but she did it anyway, unintentionally forcing Rosie to look at the organ with her. 

“Inside” Edward said. 

Amelia whirled back around. “Inside? What on Earth are you talking about.”

Edward scoffed. “Wow, guess you don’t know as much about this piece of junk as you thought.”

“I… of course I know about its insides…” she bluffed. 

“Yuh-huh,” Edward said, smiling. “Suuure.”

“I do!” she said, anger bubbling. 

“Yeah? Then prove it.” He made eye contact with Rosie. “Prove it to _both_ of us.” 

“Yeah!” Rosie said suddenly, and Amelia groaned inwardly. Why did she always take _his_ side?

“N-no way!” Amelia stammered. “Didn’t you just say there was a dead body in there?”

“No,” said Edward, looking genuinely offended. “I said he went _missing_ in it. While cleaning out the… tubes or whatever.”

“They’re called pipes. And it’s an _organ_. It may be a wind instrument, but it’s not like there’s spit flying through it every time it’s played, so why would it ever need to be cleaned on the _in_ side?” 

_“Ewwwwww”_ said Rosie. 

“Oh hush, you spit all the time,” Amelia scolded, using her sleeve to wipe a strand of drool from Rosie’s chin as she said this.

“Beats me,” said Edward. “My point is, he might’ve just gotten lost. He could still be in there. And we could be the ones who rescue him!”

Amelia looked at him like he really was the dumbest person alive, and not just like she thought he was, and said flatly “This isn’t one of your pirate-adventure books, Ed.” 

He frowned, knowing full-well that _she_ knew full-well he didn’t like his name being shortened like that. It wasn’t befitting of an adventurer or a secret prince, one of which he remained sure he was. “Well,” he said, regarding his big sister coldly. “If you’re so sure there’s nobody in there, then what’s stopping you from checking it out?”

“W-what?” she stammered.

“You heard me. You might as well. If they’re tearing this place to bits soon, who knows if you’ll get a chance to see it again? Plus,” he added, coyly, “the insides are the one bit you clearly don’t know anything about.”

Amelia knew what her ten-year-old brother was doing, but in the end was powerless to stop it, or herself. “I know more about the insides than you do. You just found out about them today!”

“Well then I guess that makes two of us!” he said, dancing around her like a hellish sprite. Rosie quickly pried herself from her sister’s grasp and joined in, blowing raspberries the whole while.

“Fine!” Amelia shouted. “You two have already ruined the sanctity of this place. The least I can do is make you look stupid for doing it.” Completely unsure what it was she was doing, Amelia marched over to where the enormous, door-sized pipes tapered down to roughly half their width in order to meet the wooden back of the organ. 

“Well?” she heard Edward ask from behind her, with Rosie giggling feverishly alongside him. “What next?”

Amelia scanned all over, not even certain what she was looking for, and only just then considered the possibility that Edward had been pulling her leg the whole while. She’d never be able to live that down, and she knew that neither he nor Rosie would ever even think about letting such a thing go. Her cheeks burned bright, and she was just about to spin around and thrash the both of them when she spotted it: the thin outline of a semi-ovular hatch on the edge of one of the pipes, with what looked to be a small, silver knob attached to its rightmost side. 

Without hesitation, she reached up and gripped it, pulling it down towards her face so that she had to duck to avoid being hit by it. Inside, the pipe was unsurprisingly hollow, but sported a series of rudimentary metal rungs neatly welded to the far end of it. A jolt of elation jumped up her spine, but before she could give into her curious temptation, she turned around and regarded her younger two siblings proudly. Both of them looked as shocked to see the opening as Amelia felt to have found it. 

“Ladies first,” she said.  
Begrudgingly, she had to explain to a teary-eyed Rosie just then that she’d been referring to Edward, not her. “In fact, you shouldn’t even come with at all. This might not be… ‘appropriate’ for you.”

“Oh yeah?” said Edward. “What are we going to do, just leave her out here on her own? She’ll start crying in less than ten minutes, and then she’ll just go blabbing to Uncle Elias.”

“Will not!” Rosie cried, stomping her foot in indignation. 

“Right,” Amelia said, knowing Edward was right. “She’s got to come with, then. Here, you go first, since you’re such a big brave explorer, and I’ll follow after you and Rosie to make sure she doesn’t fall.”

“Noooo _OOOOO!_ ” yipped Rosie, being shoved by Edward from behind. 

“Don’t be so rough with her,” said Amelia, yanking her sister aside and pointing Edward firmly up the ladder. 

“You’re one to talk,” he grumbled, elbowing past her with unnecessary forcefulness. He placed one hand at the bottom of the first rung, then paused when he saw his hand tremble. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Amelia smirk, and so before she could open her mouth to say anything at all, he took a deep breath, made a fist, and began his ascension into the darkness of the pipes. 

It wasn’t until all three of them were packed neatly inside (and the hatch was shut, to eliminate the risk of Uncle Elias seeing it swung open and getting wise to their schemes) that Amelia began considering how they were even going to be able to see where they were going. A few pinpricks of light shone through from where the occasional rivet wasn’t so tightly secured, but even that certainly wasn’t enough to see by. 

She opened her mouth to say something, but the instant she did, a loud _*CLICK*_ heralded the arrival of a long beam of light stretching out above them. Amelia gasped to see just how far up this particular pipe (dotted as it was with sporadically-placed holes on every side that presumably denoted its connection to the larger body of the organ) seemed to go on for. She squinted, trying to see past the seat of Rosie’s trousers to see if she could make out the end. 

Edward scoffed. “I bet you thought I was dumb enough not to bring a torch, didn’t you?” he said. “I bet you thought I was as dumb as _you._ ” 

“Not even possible,” Amelia said, brushing the hair out of her eyes. “I suppose that means you’ve got a way to mark where we’ve been so we don’t get lost, as well? At least tell me you brought some paper to make a map on.” 

Edward and Rosie may not have been able to see her from their vantage points, but they both knew she was smiling. Still, neither one said a word.

“Hmmph,” Amelia said. “I figured as much. Well, lucky for us, _I_ have a list of hobbies that doesn’t run out after _‘throwing rocks at bird’s nests.’_ ” At this, she produced a solitary chunk of dusty charcoal from deep within her pocket and messily scraped it along the wall beside her, roughly in the shape of an arrow pointing towards the now-sealed hatch. No explanation was needed. Both Rosie and Edward were acutely aware of their older sister’s attempts at freehand sketching, and they expressed their appreciation for it now as they always did, by rolling their eyes in exasperation. 

“Which of these tunnels do you think we should check out first?” came the first genuine question Edward had uttered in years as they began ascending the ladder. 

“The first, obviously,” said Amelia, making it clear to all that she had no intention of turning over a similar leaf, even accidentally. 

“And why is that so obvious?”

Amelia sighed. “Because Rosie’s already starting to get tired.”

“Uuuhhhh…” groaned Rosie. 

Soon enough, they were all standing at the lip of the second pipe, and it was no less gobsmacking in terms of sheer enormity than the first. At least a half-dozen shimmering portholes snaked off in just about every conceivable direction, giving it the look of a glorified jungle gym. In truth, Amelia had to privately admit, it more closely resembled a highly-advanced (if one that was a little susceptible to water damage), but still, the idea that such a structure was primarily intended for and exceedingly capable of the production of _music_ , well, _that_ was something she’d never cease to be fascinated by. 

“Just more rubbish metal,” said Edward, kicking the wall with his shoe and pretending it hadn’t hurt him to do so. 

“Fine,” Amelia said, matter-of-factly. “Go back down then, if you want. _I_ could spend an eternity in here.”

Evidently taking this as some kind of challenge, Edward worked his way behind his sister, only to elbow past her again and begin marching down the length of that initial corridor like some kind of imperialist, Amazonian trailblazer. 

“Hey!” Amelia shouted after him, at once growing concerned as to what would become of her if her fool of a brother got lost on her watch. It might honestly be a better, more preferable fate if Uncle Elias were to somehow materialize out of thin air and catch them in the act of trespassing that very second. “ _Hey!_ You don’t know where you’re going!” He was really starting to pick up the pace now, which Amelia was certain was a wholly deliberate act. 

“Come and get me, then!” she could hear him giggle from up the way. “If you know the way so well.”

“I don’t know the way at all,” she tried to say, but even she couldn’t get herself to admit a fact like that, no matter how irrevocable. “Rosie, c’mon,” she said, pulling her sister along as she tried to follow Edward’s wake, if only so they wouldn't be stranded in darkness. 

Within seconds though, that was exactly what he’d done to them. A little ways back he’d gone ‘round a curve and slipped out of sight, causing Amelia to halt herself and Rosie in their tracks, so they could proceed more cautiously and avoid stumbling into any potential pitfalls. _Uncle Elias really ought to have marked this place out better,_ she thought to herself. _Or at all. It’s an absolute deathtrap, just waiting for some poor soul to wander in and spring it. Maybe that ‘poor soul’ was Ephraim._ She furrowed her brow. _Maybe we’ll all get lucky and Edward’ll join him._

All around them, Amelia could hear Edward’s cackle, and though she knew it only sounded omnipresent on account of the pipes, the thought of that little creep crawling around in there - watching them from above and below - sent shivers down her spine. 

Suddenly, and with a surge of self-satisfaction, Amelia remembered the book of matches she’d swiped from off the countertop earlier, giving no thought to the consideration that doing so made her just as much of a pilfering problem child as the brother she so often lambasted for engaging in such activities.  
Striking one, she proceeded forward with far more confidence than before, verbally demanding that Edward come out from hiding, because clearly he’d taken things much too far, and they were to be headed back immediately. Just as the bulbous flame of her third match began eating up the last of its kindling and threatened to gorge itself on her fingers, Amelia saw it: a pair of spindly, malnourished legs hanging limply out the end of one of the pipes positioned about ¾ of the way up the side of the slightly-larger pipe they were walking through. Grinning with victory, she darted forth just as the match went out, letting go of Rosie’s hand and gripping Edwards ankles firmly. 

_“GOTCHA!”_

The harsh, chittering sound that resulted (and which no human vocal cords were capable of creating) went unnoticed by both Edward and Rosie on account of the former’s decision to jump out of his hiding place behind them at that exact moment, yelling as loud as he could and sending Rosie into a fit of hysterics. 

When Edward finished being doubled-over with self-induced laughter, he folded his arms crossly and poked Amelia sharply, irritated that she still hadn’t turned around and reacted in some manner to his brilliantly-executed high-brow homage. When she did finally turn to look at them though, and they saw her face, Edward froze, and Rosie began crying even harder. 

“W-wha…” Edward began.

“We have to go, now,” Amelia said with both hands on his shoulders. 

“Relax, don’t be such a - ” he tried to say, but Amelia was already moving past him, taking his torch and shining it the way they’d come

“Rosie, let’s go. C’mon, it’s gonna be alright. We’ve just got to…” She stood there for a moment, then whirled around and hit Edward in the arm, hard. 

“ _Ow,_ you _bitch!_ What the Hell was that for?!”

“We’re _lost,_ Edward. _You_ lost us. I don’t know where we are anymore.” She could see on his face that he thought about retorting, but had been shaken enough by her sudden change in demeanor that all he wanted was out now too.

“What do you even mean? It’s just an organ, how big can it be?”

Amelia laughed directly into his face. “Big enough for Ephraim to never find his way back out again.” 

Edward’s face paled, and that made Amelia feel a little bit more in control of the situation again. The chittering noise, which sounded somehow closer this time, changed that. It sounded like someone made of dry leaves sarcastically laughing at a bad joke. 

“What was that?” Edward wailed, sounding genuinely unsettled for once. 

“Just tell me which way you ran off from, twerp!”

Edward gestured meekly to their left, and Amelia nodded, taking the lead of their group with Rosie and Edward following her respectively. They continued like that for a while, with Amelia turning back to look at Edward expectantly every time they came to a crossroads, at which point he would think for a minute before picking a direction Amelia prayed to God wasn’t random, and she would grunt accordingly before leading them down that path. 

The entire while, Rosie was quaking in her boots, and it was all Edward and Amelia could do to get her to just move forward along with them, with Edward pushing her from behind, and Amelia pulling her from up front. It was because of this system of movement they’d chosen as a group to employ that it first came to everyone’s attention that Edward was once again missing. Rosie had suddenly become harder to pull than usual, and when she smacked right into her sister’s backside, Amelia whirled around to give Edward a piece of her mind, only to find the empty, dust-filled piping behind them.  
Initially, the raw and undiluted emotion Amelia allowed herself to be subsumed by was fear, which was promptly followed by worry, and finally righteous indignation and frustration. She couldn’t believe that insufferable goblin would still be trying to play tricks on his own family in a situation like this, and within seconds she had made up her mind to leave him behind entirely. Not only could he stay in those pipes and rot alongside Ephraim for all she cared, but she would find her own way out, without his help, and the moment she got out she’d tell anyone who’d listen that her brother deserved what had happened to him in there. 

Rosie, on the other hand, was far more reluctant to leave her brother behind. 

“‘Melia!” she cried, again and again without giving it a break. “‘Melia, please! We have to go back, we can’t just leave him.”

“Yes,” Amelia replied with a mannequin smile. “We can.” She leaned down to look her sister dead in the eye. “And if you don’t pick your feet up, missy, you’re getting left behind too.”

___

Whether it was hours later or minutes was anyone’s guess, but Amelia was so aggravated with their apparent lack of progress by this point that the scream was almost a welcome departure from their increasingly hopeless endeavor.

There were no words that went along with it, but it was most assuredly their brother’s. Amelia very much wanted it to be another base prank of his (as maddening as that would’ve been), but the primal, larynx-shredding nature of it heavily suggested otherwise. The instant it arrived on the lack of wind in that place, she instinctively moved to hold Rosie tight against her body; not for Rosie’s protection or comfort, but for her’s. 

Rosie, it seemed, had different plans, and took advantage of Amelia’s jump of surprise to pry herself free of her sister’s grip and go pattering off in the direction of her brother’s howls. Amelia (once more acting out of fear of being left alone rather than any actual concern for the wellbeing of her sister and responsibility) took off after her, trying to yell while she did so, but failing to cut through the vicious din that came from just up ahead. 

When she finally caught up with Rosie, stood still at the opening of a particularly wide pipe, she stumbled as a result of her own momentum and sent the flashlight clattering across the curved metal flooring. It was only for a fraction of a second at best, but the scene it illuminated caused her to sob in terror. 

From a fissure in the metal far above them where no light penetrated came a sleek and slithering shape that looked for all the world like a strand of meat being pushed through the end piece of a hand-cranked grinder, though it writhed and slalomed with life, as if the accompanying meat it pushed against on its way out the mincer somehow remained invisible. Suddenly it dropped with a sickening weightiness, its fall through the air and contact with the ground timed perfectly with Amelia’s feeling of her heart plunging into her stomach. 

She watched with barely-restrained disgust as whatever had just plopped out of the crevice above them squirmed around on its back, a half-dozen or so legs flailing pitifully in the air as it did so. Finally uttering a half-stifled shriek of horror upon realizing the worm was trying to right itself, Amelia took a shaky step back and finally saw what she’d been too shocked to even notice Rosie had been tugging her hair and trying frantically and wordlessly to direct her attention towards. 

From the same hole above spewed three or four additional shapes, each struggling to bypass the others in a hysterical attempt to shorten the distance between Amelia, Rosie, and them. They were utterly enormous, easily two heads taller than even the largest man, and yet could apparently squeeze through spaces no bigger than… well, Edward, assuming that’s where he’d been spirited away to. 

Finally one of the crustacean abominations hybrids broke free, and although it appeared to have left a still-spasming leg behind in the process, it showed no sign of caring as it tumbled out to join its brother. 

This one landed on its feet, and while its newfound amputation caused it to lose its bearings for a moment, it quickly regained them and raised its antennaed head to face the two girls. In the murky reflection of its inky, compound eyes, the growing silhouettes of its plummeting kin could be seen falling like rain from above. 

The moment they made contact, they were once again reduced to a wriggling pile of disoriented monstrosities, and now Amelia wasted no time in snatching her (presumably late) brother’s torch up from next to her feet, lifting Rosie up in a single arm, and hightailing it in the direction they’d come, taking little to no care this time to mark where they were going. 

The feeling that fueled her in that moment was one of unfathomable fear and disgust, only galvanized by the ceaseless sounds of skittering, scraping, and clambering that seemed to emanate from all around them and undoubtedly indicated their chasers’ continued hot pursuit. Edward’s torch swung back and forth in her left hand, lighting the way and giving off a reassuring hum from its overpowered bulb. 

Still, as uniquely energizing as the red-hot forces of pure adrenaline and unholy terror proved in those moments to be, something about the endlessly twisting nature of those makeshift corridors and the sleekness of their design that made running through them not unlike running on ice (already Amelia had slipped a few times, painfully bashing her tailbone or knees on the smooth grey surface) lent itself to a rapidly swelling sense of despair. Among a series of unfortunate elements which provided no aide on this front were the handful of times Amelia had been foolish enough to cast a glance behind her, only to see a handful of the man-sized earwigs sliding along the curves of the pipes with ease, racing along on their membranous bellies like so many bloated penguins conquering slopes of Antarctic snow.

What was more, was Rosie. As if the weight of the twenty-kilogram infant she still clutched tight against her bosom wasn’t already causing Amelia’s undeveloped limbs to ache unbearably and beg for numbness, her little sister never stopped (not for one second) clawing and scraping at her skin while shrieking mercilessly into the ear she was placed right next to. 

“Shut up, _shut up, SHUT UP!_ ” Amelia yelled at what she was viewing more and more with each passing second as little more than a spit-flinging liability. 

The pair of them turned a corner, barely keeping their balance, and fell straight down a connecting chute Amelia could have sworn hadn’t been there before, even though she’d begun to suspect they’d been being chased in circles. Her ankle flared up with pain as it connected with the horizontal pipe some seven feet below, rolling to an almost 40° angle and causing Rosie to go tumbling out of her arms with a castrophanic gong.

Amelia’s first instinct was to clutch her foot and nurse it gently while altogether ignoring her sister’s stunted attempts to pick her own sprawling self up off of the ground. So absorbed in this was she that it wasn’t until that sharp, awful _*chitterchitterchitter*_ cut through the dark once more that she even bothered to look up and see a single pair of lightly bobbing forceps, suspended as they were above the perpetually clicking and clacking mandibles of the being which emerged from the sable gloom of the tunnel before them. As the rest of it came into view, Amelia heard the _*hissss*_ of warm air pushed through the spiracles in its reinforced shell.

 _Chinks in the armour,_ she thought, and the bug fell upon them, a pair of crude, skin-like wings unfurling like a pair of tattered sails; just enough to propel itself forward and close the gap between it and its prey with lightning-fast precision. Amelia fell backwards, propping herself up with one hand, and shielding her face with the other, all the while praying and pleading for some stroke of divine intervention, that a bolt of thunder would arrive to smite the beast, or that her desperately cloying hand would, by chance, come to rest upon the hilt of a wickedly-pointed sword which she could raise above her head and impale the fiend upon it as it ineptly lowered the gaps in its shell down upon its bright and winking tip. 

But they were where no man or god could or would lend aid, and so Amelia did all that she could to ensure her own survival. She kicked out her leg, well-aware there was no guarantee she would come anywhere close to hitting her mark, and at least partially hoping she wouldn’t. 

Against all odds, however, the sole of her shoe met fiercely with the small of Rosie’s back, and the little girl was pitched forth into the welcoming embrace of the earwig, which graciously accepted the sacrifice, eagerly scuttling off again into the darkness before anyone involved had even a chance to scream. 

Swallowing her decisions like a spoonful of bitter cough syrup, Amelia reluctantly lurched to her feet, wasting no time in continuing her search for an exit. The pack, cluster... _whatever_ must have gotten separated sometime during the chase. That had to have been it. She’d gotten lucky, but that wasn’t something she could afford to squander. The others were no doubt nearby, and now that she was on her own, she was the only target on which they’d set their hearts. 

In the moments before she began to move, however, an idea struck her. Recalling the sound that had been produced by her and Rosie’s fall, she pressed herself to the tunnel’s cool, unforgiving edge and, after a slight hesitation, wrapped lightly on the wall with her knuckles. G#. Unmistakable. Which meant… which meant she was in one of the rightmost ventricles. Her face fell slightly, as this was _much_ further away from where she was sure they’d entered to begin with, and assuming that one lone cleaning hatch was the only one of its kind big enough for a grown human to fit through, that meant she’d have a long way to go if she ever wanted to make it back alive. 

Still, it was a start. She knew where she was, and exactly how to keep it that way. She shuffled away, careful to make as little noise as possible, suspicious now that vibrations caused on one end of the organ’s pipes could be felt as far away as the other, so she would have to use her new navigational tactic very sparingly indeed. She grinned as she moved, unable to help herself from doing so. Her musical prowess, her knowledge and appreciation of the finer things in life was going to be her saving grace after all. 

___

It was dark out there, in the space between the walls. Darker than it had been in the pipes. And yet, perhaps because of the distance through which she’d been carried, Rosie was acutely aware that the cavernous space in which she was now held was far grander than the metallic tunnels she’d previously occupied, like some subterranean assart, hollowed-out and inhabited by a scourge of chitinous nymphs. 

She knew she’d been bitten or pricked in some manner, on the leg, but it didn’t hurt none. The wound had stung sharply at first, but soon enough Rosie had been filled with a warm and tingly sense of comfort and ease. Being held there unable to move and pressed up against the monster’s warm, pulsating abdomen was just like being wrapped up in her mother’s arms again, and before long she wasn’t sure why she’d ever even been afraid in the first place. 

Through the small gap allowed her between her captor’s many jittering legs, Rosie’s one remaining eye peered out and saw (illuminated by an array of sunbeams shining through the cracks in the brick wall behind them) the very system of steel piping she’d wanted so desperately to escape from mere moments, hours, or days beforehand. Across each cylindrical vein she saw dozens of dark shapes move, swimming in, out, over, and around. It occurred to her in that moment just how much the scene resembled that of a busy market square, with each tube an alley through which vendors passed to hock their wares. 

She strained to listen for the familiar barks of mustachioed men pushing their wooden carts, or to smell the scent of freshly-baked bread, but all that graced her nose was the stench of wet soil, and all that met her ears was the soft patter of a thousand segmented legs.

Although…

Through all of that, there did come another sound. It was faint at first, but ever-so-slightly grew until it became unmistakably matched with Rosie’s very first memory of her big sister crying, after their brother had pulled her hair. The sound swelled and faded, over and over again, accompanied by a sort of tuneless clanging noise everywhere it went. Encircling each of the pipes her sister was clearly still running through like a rat in a maze were what appeared to be a great number of her insectoid pursuers who, rather than slip through the myriad of cracks and crevices of what they appeared to be using as some sort of highway system like they so clearly and easily could, seemed instead to be employing a different tactic to psychologically damage and herd their prey. 

Many of the earwigs had latched onto the incessantly twitching ends of one another, creating a sort of living chain which fit over the pipes like a ring on a finger. They looked at first to be in great pain, but upon further inspection seemed instead to be straining mightily as they used their combined strength to nominally constrict the piping they clung to. Rosie wondered with an oscillating consciousness what purpose this strange behavior could possibly have, and why it was that Amelia’s constant banging seemed to change in pitch each time they engaged in it. 

No light shone from out of the litany of tight entryways and exits this colony used to navigate the pipes, which must have meant that Amelia had lost her flashlight somewhere along the way, and was now stumbling around in near-darkness, the idea of which Rosie found to be thoroughly amusing. 

She thought, for a moment, about calling out to her sister, and offering some kind of warning of the unknown perils surrounding her foolhardy attempts at egress, but thought better of it in the end, electing instead to submit to the coiling embrace of her hard-shelled abductor. As her muscles relaxed, the creature’s grip tightened, swaddling her like a baby and pulling her further into its nestling, spiraled form. 

The last thing Rosie heard before her awareness fully went was that same gentle chittering drown out the last of her sisters cries of confusion, and the last thing she thought was how funny it was that it sounded just like human laughter. 

End


End file.
